


Lucky to be Born

by Aimanre



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Zuko, Canon Abuse, Episode: s02e09 Bitter Work, Episode: s03e10-11 The Day of Black Sun, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, No beta we die like mne, Sad Boi Zuko, facing your abuser
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26466703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aimanre/pseuds/Aimanre
Summary: There were only three things in Zuko's life that he believed in wholeheartedly:1) Capturing the Avatar would restore his honor2) Azula always lied3) The universe hated himThese facts were irrevocably, unquestionably true.Or are they?
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Ozai & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 70





	Lucky to be Born

**Author's Note:**

> First time writing an ATLA fic, enjoy!

_Lightning streaked across the sky, irradiating the world in brief bursts of purple before plunging it back into the waiting darkness. Rain pelted the ground with the force of a herd of stampeding Shark-bulls. In his rush to race for the storm, he’d left behind the broad hat that could have given him some shelter from the ferocity of the rain. He did his best to shield his eyes and afford them acceptable vision as he directed his racing ostrich-horse towards a hill with a promising height. Sunpoppy was a brave animal, despite the thunder booming overhead and the trees quaking around them, she followed his guidance faithfully. They charged ahead and away from his Uncle._

Warm light is dancing across the painting as he sets it down carefully onto red silk sheets. He rises and casts a last glance around his room. The glided walls are interspersed by crimson hangings imprinted with the Fire Nation symbol, accentuating the glitter of the ornaments stationed around the chamber. In his simple tunic and worn cloak, he stands out like an ugly mark in here. He shakes off the thought and picks up his Dao swords, sheathing them onto his back with fluid grace as he strides towards the door. He reaches up to pull on the hood, brushing back the bangs falling shaggily into his eyes; still, it is a relieving change from the constant yanking that his golden headpiece had formerly subjected his short hair to. As he crosses the threshold, there is only one thought in his mind. _I’m coming, Uncle._

_They made it halfway up the hill before the path turned too treacherous for even an ostrich-horse to pick her way through. He wished he had some treat to offer Sunpoppy as he got off her back. The poor animal had braved a storm for him. However, his pockets were disappointingly empty, so he just offered her a pat before leaving her behind. He did not even bother to tether her, uncomfortable with the idea of rendering her helpless in case of a lightning strike. He’d find his own way back somehow._

_Instead, he began the demanding climb to the top. Water ran in rivulets down the hill, leaving the terrain slippery and fickle, deceit lurking in the form of loosening footholds. He resorted to climbing on all fours, ignoring the stinging of his unguarded hands as craggy rocks tore at them. He blinked the rain out of his eyes and forced himself to the top through sheer mulish will. He would_ not _give up now. His strained muscles finally delivered his body onto the peak. He pushed himself to his feet, panting, and stood there for a moment, surveying the jagged peaks surrounding him._

_He was all alone under a canopy of the heavens’ fury. But he wasn’t afraid. The storm was nothing in face of the helpless outrage blazing within him._ I’m ready now, _he thought_.

The bunker is disarmingly desolate as he stalks down the stone corridors. Distantly, he can hear the distinct sounds of battle being waged overhead. He feels a sting of pity for the Avatar’s forces, he knows their losses would be heavy today, Azula would have made sure of that. He wishes he’d acted sooner, wishes his decision hadn’t taken so long to solidify, then he could’ve spared them the ensuing grief. He has half a mind to turn back and retrieve Uncle first. Surely that would be more prudent, they could directly join the fighting without having to face-

_No,_ he tells himself, _I need to do this, I will not give up again without fighting._ So he ignores the lead weight of his reluctant limbs and the pounding of his terrified heart and makes himself turn into the hallway that houses his destination. He comes to a stop facing the deceptively small metal door. He stands there for a moment, looking at it, taking measured breaths. “I’m ready to face you.”

He strides forward decisively, slamming open the door, eager to make his move before his determination fizzles out. His gaze is focused across the hall upon the armor-clad figure of his father hidden behind the belt of Imperial guards shielding him. Firelord Ozai is dressed resplendently, drinking tea with a blasé air about him as his soldiers die for him elsewhere. Secure in the knowledge that his daughter is taking the heat meant for him. 

Fath- _Ozai_ glances up, an irritated expression crossing his face as he sets down his teacup with pointed precision. “Prince Zuko? What are you doing here?”

Zuko pushes down the thrill of instinctive fear that rears up at the tone and says firmly, “I’m here to tell the truth.”

The change is instantaneous on Ozai’s face as it curls into a smirk. “Telling the truth during the middle of an eclipse. This should be interesting.” He gestures for the guards to file out, leaving them alone in the hall. Zuko can tell from the amusement in Father’s eyes that he _knows,_ knows that being alone with Ozai is far more nerve-wracking for Zuko than any number of guards could ever be. Once, the glimpse of that cruel humor alone would have left him paralyzed, now it only fuels the righteous anger burning through him.

Zuko funnels this newfound fire into his voice, so when he speaks, his voice rings with all the conviction that his Father had once tried to burn out of him. There is no more place for fear, not within him. “First of all, in Ba Sing Se, it was Azula who took down the Avatar, not me..”

_His breathing was ragged as he stood beneath the writhing skies. He watched as lightning arced above him, an erratic crack flickering abruptly downwards in a deadly strike, before vanishing from being. Sometimes lighting trees on fire, other times simply fading out of existence without having amounted to anything. It was almost beautiful._ Nothing like Azula’s, _he thought, detachedly,_ Azula’s lightning is precise and lethal. She would never tolerate this sort of pointless frivolity.

_Not that it would stay aimless for long, hopefully. It was raking at him, the duration it was taking for a strike to hit him. If there was one thing he could always count on, it was his own misfortune. Fate had never spared him from its stings and slaps, had always knocked him down at every turn and drowned him in misery. And now that he could take it, it was taunting him with mercy? It was as cruel as any joke Azula used to play. He could not bear it any longer._

_“Come on!”, he yelled, face-upturned into hard pellets of rain, uncaring of the water trickling into his nostrils. He yelled as loud as he could, channelized all the injustice of his pathetic life into his hoarse voice. Somehow, it felt like this moment was a reiteration of all the failure and pain of his sixteen years, like the screams he had been holding in for the past too-many years were clawing their way out of him. “You’ve always thrown everything you could at me! Well, I can take it, and now I can give it back!”_

The Firelord predictably does not take the news well, drawing himself up to his full height. He’d always seemed so big to Zuko like that, a phantom towering over him, but now, he looks like just another man. “Get out! Get out of my sight right now if you know what is good for you!”

“That’s another thing”, says Zuko, firmly. For once, his confidence is not feigned. For once, there is nothing but a bone-deep sense of rightness ringing in his words. It is incredible, how freeing truth can be. “I’m not taking orders from you anymore.” _You don’t rule me anymore._

Ozai’s former amusement is nowhere to be seen now. It is clear that he did not expect this brazen rebellion from his usually cowering son. His hair is askew and his teeth grind together as he snarls, “You will obey me, or this defiant breath will be your last!” He makes a motion forward as he speaks, a habitual reflex to emphasize his angry words with angry fists when it comes to disobedience in his son.

_No, you don’t!_ Zuko pulls out his swords in a quick movement, his own reflexes are that of a veteran warrior’s now, no longer will he cringe and cower from Ozai’s wrath. No longer is he a little boy that can be silenced with fire. No longer is he thirteen.

“Think again”, he asserts. “I am going to speak my mind, and you are going to listen.” There is nothing but assurance in the way his hands grasp the Dao swords, protruding from his fists like an extension of himself. His father, who had always sneered at his desire to learn non-bender weapons as a child, grimaces in anger. Murder blazes in his eyes.

But it seems that calculation wins out instead, because his face smooths out in the next moment as he seats himself back down. With some effort, Ozai forces laughter back into his gaze.

_Lightning danced mockingly in front of him, leagues away, rendered merciless by its mercifulness. Thunder rumbled half-soothingly overhead. Why was the universe taunting him with pity which it had never afforded him before? The injustice of it almost choked him. “Come on, strike me! You’ve never held back before!”_

_Nothing happened. He might as well be non-existent, for all the good his yelling did. Sometimes, he wished that he was. Hot tears welled up in his eyes, and for the first time in three years, he let them fall. A guttural scream was wrenched out of him, excruciating in its powerlessness, grating at his tortured lungs. He fell to his knees, dimly glad that at least this time, his father was not here to witness him in this shameful position. Again. He bowed his head under a sky that refused to smite him._

“… Now I realize that banishment is far too merciful a penalty for treason.” Ozai closes his eyes and there is an ominous gravity to his tone as he continues, “Your penalty will be far steeper.”

Father does not hesitate. He rears up faster than a striking snake, summoning blinding lightning with a flick of his wrists and shooting it at Zuko within a blink.

Zuko is barely able to get into a grounding stance before the lightning strikes his chest with brutal accuracy. The force of it shoves him back several feet, but he somehow manages to keep his stance intact. The power is beyond imagination, the pain is beyond endurance. _No, I won’t let you win!_ It takes impossible effort to grasp the lightning and bend it to his will, but he does it. It blazes a burning path through his arm, up his shoulder, down to his stomach; and it is all he can do to keep directing the unending current- to keep a tight rein on the cold fire before it burns him from the inside.

When the stream finally ceases, he pushes the terrifying energy up to his other shoulder ( _I can end this right here, right now_ ), down his arm ( _I can give it back as good as I always got_ ), and out of his pointed fingers ( _He can’t hurt me anymore_ ). The lightning shoots out of his fingers with deadly grace, beautiful in its transience, hurtling across the hall before unerringly striking his mark.

The blast at his feet throws Ozai back into a wall, slamming into the Fire Nation insignia before sliding down. Zuko does not stick around to “prove his bravery”, he has nothing to prove to Ozai any longer. He’s gone before Father can even open his eyes, slipping out with all the sneakiness of the Blue Spirit.

_It took over an hour for the tears to stop dribbling down his face. When they were finally gone, when his sore throat had vented all it could, he finally returned to himself. Embarrassed, he scrubbed harshly at his face, grateful to the rain for masking the extent of his shame. The storm had been withering down for a while, and now, he watched as the clouds parted enough for a sliver of moon to shed a silver curtain onto the world. The rain had waned to a drizzle, flyaway drops catching the moonlight and glinting like falling stars, dripping with a soft pitter-patter onto the silver-shaded vegetation. The sight felt like a balm to his raw and aching soul, the soft moonlight caressed him, somehow soothing the painful vulnerability he’d been feeling._

_Detachedly, he wondered why he had been spared. Especially earlier, when he’d been on his knees, with tears streaming down his face. He had no way of getting into a redirecting stance if a stray lightning had caught him then, and he’d been half-sure even as he was sobbing that that was what would happen. That sort of cruel humor was in-keeping with his luck. Then why had he been spared by the spirits? Just to mock him? To keep his suffering prolongated? Somehow that didn’t feel quite right. Fate had always liked kicking him when he was down, punishing his weakness. The universe hadn’t spared him before when he’d been that pitiful. Or-_

_Or at least his Father hadn’t._

No! _The treasonous thought_ _sent a chill down his spine, irrational fear twisted his belly, sure that Father would somehow sense his mutinous thought from a thousand leagues away._ No, Father had to do it! I was disobedient and cowardly. I was lucky to even be born to him!

_But the errant thought had ruined the quiet peacefulness of the moment, the maelstrom of turmoil had jerked back to life within him. Reality, with all its considerable weight, had come crashing back down. The illusion of safety the moon had graced him with had snapped away, leaving him feeling small and alone._

_He sighed and got up, feeling wet and miserable, dreading the torment of finding his way back. He could almost picture Uncle Iroh throwing out some proverb about not despairing and letting moonlight turn on the light in him or something if he were here. And suddenly, all he wanted was to be back in the comfort of Uncle’s presence. That wish breathed life into his worn body and he hastened to pick a path downwards with rejuvenated eagerness, already longing for Uncle’s warm hugs and hot tea._

Zuko slips out of the bunker with ease. He didn’t even have to use much stealth as most of the posts seemed abandoned, it seemed like the Avatar’s forces had given a tough fight, impressive considering how prepared Azula had been. He had found barely any noteworthy signs of battle within the bunker itself (except for that one Dai Li agent twisted up inside an oddly contorted hunk of metal, who had managed to do _that_?), but outside, it is pandemonium. Fire Nation red still outnumbers the invaders but they seemed to be packing quite a punch. A strange conglomeration of colors and fighting styles made the invaders easily identifiable, and- Was that a _tree_ fighting amongst them?

He shakes his head, blaming the aftermath of the lightning for addling his mind, and hurries to the prison holding Uncle. There is a stupid smile pulling at his mouth. He still has to convince the Avatar and his friends to take him in but the prospect can’t hamper his mood. He’s finally made peace with himself, finally found the courage to choose the path that had always called to him, finally broken free of his family’s leash. He’d just taken on Father and won!

The thought sobers him up a little. As he runs up the prison steps, his only regret is that it had taken him this long to realize that it hadn’t been the universe that was cruel and uncaring.

Only his father. 


End file.
